EXCLUSIVE: Fired Solicitor: Grove School Board “Didn’t Like What I Told Them.”

12/7/16

By Hilde Kate Lysiak

The former Solicitor for the Selinsgrove School District claims he was fired for doing his job when he advised the board to accommodate Transgender students.

“They didn’t like what I told them. I told them they needed to accommodate transgender students. They didn’t like it,’’ Carl Beard told the Orange Street News in an exclusive interview.

Beard told the OSN that accommodating Transgender students was something that both the PA Board and National Board both urged school boards to do. By advising the school of this, he was only doing his job as Solicitor, says Beard.

But Selinsgrove Board Members say they fired Beard for giving inaccurate information: that the school could lose Title 9 funding, according to a report in a local paper.

However, Beard says it is the Selinsgrove School Board is the one being inaccurate. Beard says he never told the board they were in danger of losing Title 9 funding.

“I never said that. It didn’t happen,’’ Beard told the OSN when asked about the comments.

Still, Beard says that he isn’t happy about getting fired.

“I’m disappointed,” said Beard. “There were NO issues in school only in the community and beyond. My advise was correct just unpopular.”

The issue of transgender people using bathrooms became a big issue in Selinsgrove earlier this year after a letter was sent home to parents telling them there was a change in policy that would allow transgender students to use either bathroom.

Repeated calls and emails to the Selinsgrove Superintendent’s Officer were not returned at the time of publication.

That aside, the advice is correct. Even without Beard having said so, courts across the country, beginning with EEOC administrative judges, are routinely affirming that discrimination against trans people is sex discrimination under Title VII and Title IX.

There’s solid SCOTUS precedent affirming federal agencies have the right to interpret law and policy in places where clarification is needed. The Trump Administration may well order a change to that interpretation but under the current structure, Title IX protects trans students and technically, although it’s not been directly enforced yet in re trans students or teachers, the provisions of the law allow the DoE to withhold funding for Title IX discrimination.

More importantly, 1.5 million students attend schools which operate under trans-affirming policies up to and including in segregated spaces, and there have been ZERO instances of these policies being abused by non-trans students, or of non-trans students being harmed by the presence of trans students. School policy ought be based on the best and most successful practices, and respecting the identity of trans students has been an unqualified success in places where it has been applied.

The fear mongering from religious social conservative organizations serve only the interests of those organizations, not the interest of students. It is unfortunate that in so many communities across the country, these outfits so division and discord, at the expense of innocent students, in order to achieve their own political and profit goals.